Wednesday, 24 March 2010

Heroic Pit of Snark

Usually, I get comfortable with doing an instance on normal before I attempt heroic. That was no different for PoS. We'd run it a few times and there were no more unpleasant surprises or uncomfortable moments for me, so I started dreaming of the loot that drops at heroic. On monday, we had had some awesome runs with really good dps, so we were feeling confident. I took a little break - I forgot why - and then decided it was Time.

Now, before I disclose the juicy details of how much I failed, I want to describe what kind of day it had been for me. I had been busy with a corpus study. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, it's basically looking up strings of words that have something in common and then identifying in what type of sentence they occur in everyday language. And yes, it is as tedious and sucky as it sounds. This one had to be done in google, so I spent most of my day squinting at the screen, trying to figure out what the writer meant when he wrote down that particular verb. I had a humungous headache at the end of it. To make things worse, I hadn't actually finished the damned thing and made the 'oh-so-smart' decision to drink some coffee after I called it quits. About the time we entered PoS, I was jumpy, headachy, and suffering from a coffee crash.

But I desperately wanted that loot. I have a chance that something drops at every boss, so I thought I'd get one thing, if I was lucky, right? I even gave Pocky kitty eyes to run it with me, even though he was tired and had work the next morning.

We had ok-looking dps, with a notably vocal rogue and shaman. The trash went fine, but then we came to the first boss. Forgemaster Garfrost. Even on normal, this is a downright pain to heal. Our dps decided (of course) to not use the boulders he throws to break line of sight, and nuke through it instead. We wiped. On our second wipe, the rogue chimed "You are terribad mate". Pocky asked who he was talking about, and I guessed (correctly) that he meant me. I know I wasn't doing very well, but I didn't think it was all my fault. Just mainly my fault. It's a difference.

After the third wipe, the shaman asked, sort of kindly, if I had a dps spec. I was mortified, embarassed in just about every way a healer can be. We pressed on nevertheless, but it didn't really get any better. The rogue and shaman kept making remarks on how badly I was doing, which was of course completely justified, but still not very nice. The more we died, the more I panicked and messed up. I'm one of those people, you see, that want to run and hide when something goes wrong instead of thinking of ways to fix it. Even Pocky was getting (mildly) annoyed, mainly at his repair bill.

After about seven wipes I told the party it was not happening and quit. I really wasn't going to heal through this thing in a mood like that. (Did I mention I'm a healer diva? ;D)

Yesterday, Pocky asked me if I wanted to do it again. I stared at him, but was tempted in again by the loot. Of course I was, material girl much? This time, we asked someone we know and trust to dps with us. I'm not going to claim we did not die and the run was smooth as cream, but it was one of the best runs I have ever done. There were still so many things that went wrong, and all of them could have ruined the mood easily, but the hunter we had asked to come made it all worth while. We died and wiped, but not as much as before, and absolutely no loot dropped for me. (Meanwhile Pocky has collected all of his loot already. Huff.) The hunter had this comic relief thing going on with the gnome mage, who had the unfortunate experience of being stuck in the fail pug. We were even playing off some roleplay-ish jokes along the way. And, to top it all off, our hunter was also a source of usefull information that made healing this instance a lot more doable, as he offered advice in a friendly and non-judgemental way.

We ended up finishing off the end boss, Scourgelord Tyrannus, to the astonishment of the entire group. We had done it! Even though the fail wipes had piled up and I lost a lot of gold on candles and repairs, without actually getting anything in drops. And we had a great time doing it. Amazing!

Incidentally, some great tanking stuff dropped for Pocky. Naturally. I am so jealous. Heehee.

Random: I had you in my RSS reader from the feed someone in SAN made... and now I was reading the Defias forums and ran into you there o.O I suppose it's not so unusual, but I wasn't expecting to find people I "know" on Defias, since I x-realmed my priest and I haven't really socialized much. So yeah, hi.

Grats on PoS even if nothing purple and delicious dropped for you. On the other hand, the more tanking stuff Pocky gets, the easier he is to heal :) I hate the healing PoS as well. I used to dread Garfrost so much simply because nuking through is a nightmare. I ran the other night with guildies and they all dutifully got behind boulders and dropped their stacks - and it was suddenly so mystically easy I got retrospectively incredibly pissed off with all those damn pugs who would rather make my life a misery than move 2 steps to drop a debuff. GAH!